Blind
by plecostomus-of-justice
Summary: Changed my premise! A series of Michael and Kate centred vignettes, their relationship, their happiness and their ultimate downfall. Title remains as I think it still works!
1. Introductions part 1

_Introductions part 1 - Deliver us from evil_

It was a hunt, same as usual, Michael coordinating, the others hunting. It was all going smoothly, Michael was just starting to relax slightly, when suddenly, everything went to hell.

"Amon! He's running! He's running! Down towards Walled City" cried Takahashi suddenly over the radio

"Shit! Can you reach him?"

Michael cut in, with his access, he could see what was going on

"Takahashi, Doujima! You're closest. Break off and go after him. Doujima, take Garden Road. Takahashi, you take Halley. Go, you need to get to the intersection before he does!"

They ran, he could see them on his screen. Suddenly, he realised that Doujima was much slower, this was not going to work.

"Doujima! MOVE!" He screamed, but it was too late.

She could not catch up, he realised. Takahashi was nearly there, the witch was turning to meet him, and Doujima was not there. The others were too far away to help. It only came down to who was fastest now, Michael watched with horror. He could not raise Takahashi on the comm, there was interference, the others were running, but they were too slow, everyone was too slow. He could see in his mind's eye the two men, hunter and hunted. Takahashi would raise his gun, but then a bust of static cut through Michael's earpiece. He winced, the sound, that sound, was the sound of power. He heard a gunshot fire, then, the worst moment

"Michael" the voice came over faint

"Takahashi, I'm here" the boy replied, sensing what had happened.

"He got me, I'm bleeding. It hurts, oh God it hurts."

"The others are on the way. Hang on." The only words of comfort Michael could think to give, they sounded shallow even to his ears.

"Oh God, forgive me." Wailed Takahashi down the comm.

Doujima began screaming down the radio, and Michael guessed it was bad. But it was the dying man's final words that chilled him to the bone. In a whisper, barely audible over the sound of Doujima's screams, he could hear Takahashi, who must have found the strength somewhere deep within him.

"Our father, who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread" his voice was failing now, he was desperately struggling to get the words out, and Michael, never a religious person, though he had been brought up in a Christian family, found himself whispering along too

"and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil."

The man fell silent, and Michael whispered,

"for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for now and forever. Amen."

He had no idea where it came from, the prayer had been buried deep inside himself, but he said it anyway. For one moment he felt peace, then the horror of what had happened hit him. He had ordered a man to his death. Him, Michael, not yet fifteen, had sent a man to his death. Through thoughtlessness. It had never occurred to him that Doujima would not be as quick, it had never crossed his mind. And now a man lay dead because of it. He punched the desk, then stood up, kicking his chair, knocking it over then kicking, again, again, again, hearing splintered wood and snapping fabric. He raged at himself, he was furious. He hadn't noticed the tears start to fall, he was just too angry.

The others did not come back to the office. Once the mess had been cleared up, the witch removed by Factory and Takahashi's body taken away by SOLOMON operatives, they went off to deal with the incident in their own way. Karasuma went home for a drink. Amon paced the streets all night, furious at himself for being in the wrong place. Doujima went home too, she was deeply shaken by it all, so she did what she usually did to deal with horrible situations, she spent lots of money online in various designer stores, using the excitement of her purchases to assuage her guilt. Michael, with few means of escape, sat exhausted after his outburst, then, hiding the broken chair, he set to work fixing bugs in his code, simply to avoid thinking. He numbed his brain with C, it was the only way he knew to stop the pain and the frustration he felt.

The funeral was held a week later. Zaizen agreed to let him out for it, and so he ended up being driven to the Christian church sitting between Karasuma and Amon who had been instructed to keep an eye on him. At the church he sat at the back and tried to look inconspicuous, Amon had leant him a white shirt, Hattori a black tie, and both were too big. No one had trousers that would fit him, so he was wearing his usual cheap cargo pants, and Zaizen had instructed him to keep his collar visible, probably to keep the tracking system working at maximum efficiency. He felt the disapproving looks of the presiding minister on him, and the odd looks thrown his way by Takahashi's family. He felt increasingly uncomfortable as the service drew on, feeling oddly out of place, repressing the strange urge to flinch whenever he heard a strange noise. Sitting sandwiched between Hunters in the car on the way home, a realisation began to slowly dawn on him, settling itself into a cold, hard lump in his stomach. He had been imprisoned for six months now, and he was becoming less and less comfortable with the outside world. Much later that night, when the others were long gone, he sat surfing the internet, looking for pictures of the outside world. He had almost succeeded in convincing himself that his discomfiture had been brought about by the funeral, but the lump in his stomach remained, the feeling that he was slowly acclimatising to this life, that freedom was escaping him. He thought about this for a long, long time, staring out into the dark, watching the moon make her slow procession across the night sky. Eventually though, as dawn broke over the cityscape, his pragmatic side won out. What use was there in dreaming of freedom when freedom was an unobtainable ideal?

Somehow, Takahashi's death became some kind of watershed for the whole team. For Michael, he learnt the realities of the STNJ , and began to see his role more clearly within it. He also felt the inevitabilities of his constrained life, and was finally able to settle to it and to stop fighting. He still needed to work on his own projects, but not with the same desperation as before. He was gradually realising that he could not maintain himself without integrating the STNJ into his life, that to try, would be to court insanity. He began to interact with the team, speaking to them casually, as well as during briefings. He began to rebuild his own personality, brightening the office up, just a little bit, with his previously hidden, optimistic side. But he never forgot how his lack of planning caused a death.

Doujima realised the value of the team, and that family and money sometimes cannot protect against disaster. She realised that, had she trusted Michael, Takahashi may have survived, and slowly she began to treat the boy with more respect. She would never like him, she still did not think that Zaizen should have brought him into the STNJ, but she did begin to respect his skills. She even brought him the odd bits of clothing and food. She could never bring herself to apologise, but then she was giving peace offerings, and Michael recognised that, even though he could never like her, he could begin to stop hating her.

Amon became the official team leader after Takahashi's death. Always reserved and stoic, he built up more barriers between himself and the team. Michael watched him recede from the group. He had always been wary of the Amon; in the very depths of night, when exhaustion overtook him, he still experienced nightmares of a black-gloved hand, a snapping neck, a complete paralysis, waking up, unable to move for just that split second of sheer terror. Whilst they were fading with each passing night, they left Michael with a residual feeling of deep unease towards the leader. However, he no longer believed Amon invincible or impenetrable, no matter how high the barriers between Amon and the team were built. For it was Michael, who, late at night and under Kosaka's explicit instructions, would delete Amon's traffic violations from the police computers. Michael knew that speed, petrol and danger were Amon's weaknesses.


	2. Introductions part II

_Introductions part II - Hunter/Dancer_

It was manic for a few weeks after all this. Doujima went on very few hunts, her family connections protected her from the dirty side of the job, and so, the hunting was left mainly to Karasuma and Amon. Thought the pair worked together very closely, and could almost read each others' thoughts during the hunt, Michael was still working at full stretch to make everything as easy as possible for them. The shock of Takahashi's death had led to him becoming almost obsessively precise over his information gathering, and he would plan hunts down to the second, organising escape routes, backup plans and the like. He was stretched near to breaking, they all were. So it was a huge relief to the whole team when the new hunter was assigned..

"Twenty six year old female, British origin but lived in Japan most of her childhood. Been a hunter for ten years with STNA, but now wants to return to her roots."

Announced Michael in the office, the day she was due to arrive.

The description barely did her justice. She danced into the STNJ, wearing jeans and a t shirt, long hair left loose down her back. It was a strange way to describe her, but she was always dancing, always moving to some internal rhythm no one else could hear. As she arrived on the fifth floor for the first time, Michael looked at her, with curiosity, but also nervousness. It had been a long time since he had met any new faces, and even in his old life, he had not exactly been sociable. So when she smiled briefly at him, he merely glowered back, not quite trusting his face to draw any other expression. He sat quietly as she introduced herself, observing her, gathering information, as he would do with a computer system. There was very little for him to say, so he remained silent. It was only when she began discussing the possibility of meeting for a drink after work, of "getting to know the team," that he decided he had had enough. Not wishing to explain his story in great detail to her, and not wanting to be singled out for attention, he grabbed his laptop and a stack of files and slunk off to one of the case rooms to file the old cases away.

Alone in the room, he was able to hook up improvised speakers to the laptop and play his usual heavy rock music loudly whilst he sat on the floor and began filing. Between the music and his immersion in the task of filing, Michael failed to hear the door, and the first thing he knew of Kate's entrance into the room, was when she touched him lightly on the shoulder. He flinched, spooked by the sudden contact, and jerked away from the touch. Kate was puzzled by the violence of the reaction, but said nothing. She had enough experience of Hunters to know about the various strange behaviours that emerged throughout such a strange career.

"Miss Karasuma told me you'd most likely be here" Kate began "I thought I'd come and find you. We've all decided to go for a drink after we finish here, over at Harry's. Do you want to join us?"

Michael froze for a moment, not knowing what to say. "I can't" he eventually replied.

"Oh go on. You can't be so busy that you couldn't spare half an hour or so for a coffee or something. And Harry's only over the road, it can't be so far out of your way home?"

"I just can't" he replied, more forcefully.

"Sure there's nothing I can say to change..." began Kate again, assuming the boy was just shy.

"No! I can't" Michael nearly shouted "Go ask Amon or Karasuma why. Or maybe Doujima. I'm sure someone will tell you. Doujima would probably even enjoy it!" his voice dropped, but a deeply bitter streak cut through it.

Kate shook her head in confusion and left the room quietly. She was completely at a loss as to what had just taken place, and decided to take the boy's advice and go ask.

It was Karasuma who eventually filled her in on the "edited highlights" of the hacker's story. Horrified and slightly guilty, Kate sat in a corner of the office, wondering what to do. She did not want to antagonise the boy further, but she did so badly want to apologise to him. However, every time she tried to go back to the store room, someone interrupted her or something got in her way. She made it to Harry's for her "introduction drink," mostly social but also an opportunity to get a handle on her co-workers. No-one stayed long, she sensed that the STNJ office was not the friendly central office of STNA, where people seemed more relaxed, or maybe, and this thought bothered her, they had become hardened to death at the STNA. Certainly, she realised that her STNJ co-workers were still taking the death of her predecessor hard, whilst in the STNA, hunter deaths were so common that people recovered from them fairly quickly.

She wandered back into the office, needing to collect her coat and rucksack, but also wanting a chance to talk to Michael, maybe to apologise for her behaviour. She entered the office and nearly jumped out of her skin seeing him sitting in front of his computer. He appeared to be completely immersed in something, eyes shut, whole being focussed on whatever he was listening to on the headphones connected to his laptop computer, headphone leakage blaring sound out into the empty room. The angle at which she was positioned enabled her to see his screen, and, overcome by her own curiosity, she glanced at it, vaguely expecting to see some porn or something. She was amazed to see just a simple media player, with a track she did not recognise, playing. At that moment, the track ended, and she watched for a few seconds as he remained frozen in the silence.

He slowly opened his eyes and started slightly when he saw her.

"I'm sorry for interrupting" she began "I came back to collect my belongings"

He gave her a slightly shifty look, there were plenty of times when people had "come back to collect belongings" which actually meant "come back to dump a load of work on Michael." Though, he reasoned, it was her first day, so maybe she was telling the truth,

"Actually, I'll be honest with you" she continued "aye aye, here we go," Michael thought, waiting for the instructions that were sure to follow

"I came to apologise for my behaviour earlier. Karasuma explained it. I'm sorry, I was out of line. I shouldn't have pushed the issue, I didn't realise. We didn't have that sort of arrangement at STNA. I'm sorry" The words came out slightly rushed, she was unused to apologising.

The kid visibly brightened, it was clear to Kate that he had been expecting her to say something very different. He took a deep breath then began

"I'm sorry too. I've looked in your file, you're not a mind reader, you couldn't have known. I know it's all a bit weird, I guess I was just a bit disconcerted." Michael was shocked at himself, he didn't apologise, he rarely talked about his own feelings. He just felt that he owed her an honest explanation.

He waited nervously for some kind of acknowledgement, half expecting her to laugh at his vulnerability. Instead she smiled and asked simply

"If you don't mind me asking, what were you listening to earlier, when I came in?"

He glanced around, then replied "oh, it was just some trance I downloaded, I dunno. It's just good, you know"

He blushed fiercely, turning back to the screen so she could not see. How could he reveal the music that allowed him to take himself out of Ravens Flat, out of STN, if only for the length of a track?

She nodded, almost seeming to understand.

"Yep – trance is good" she smiled. "If you like, I've got a CD of new stuff you can borrow. European stuff, my brother sent me a CD of a while back. The Americans just don't do it the same way." She laughed, he chuckled.

"That'd be good" he replied, as she burrowed around in her bag, finally removing a CD stashed in an envelope, and handing it over.

Then she was gone. Dancing away across the office, hair still shining in the light from the screens. He sat, holding the CD, amazed. He was so used to being on the periphery of the action and interaction, an observer rather than a participant, that for her to speak to him, to lend him something, to apologise to him, was all, well, very confusing. He was still confused about her when he finally crawled to bed, unable to do any more work, unable to do much other than listen to her CD and think, letting a stupid little smile grow across his lips.

Kate seemed to brighten up the entire office with her exuberant personality. Both Karasuma and Doujima enjoyed her company. Kate would often sit during quiet times sharing one of Doujima's magazines, laughing about new fashion. She gently worked Karasuma out of her strait-laced shell enough for her to occasionally let her businesslike façade down enough to join in the laughter. Kate was also a good hunter, methodical and efficient. Partnered with Amon, they worked well as a team, though Amon refused to respond to her coaxing and remained quiet and detached from the group. She gradually became more wary of him as he seemed to distance himself from her, she sensed him isolating himself from the group and becoming more involved with the management. In the STNA this had always been a bad sign, a sign of conspiracy, a sign of distrust and eventual failure and collapse. Though she would never reveal it to anyone, the reason she had left STNA was her nagging sense that something was changing. She could sense tension in the air, like ozone heralding the storm, and she had got out before the lightening struck. She sensed something similar from Amon, and instinctively maintained a distance whilst trying not to let her suspicions show to the rest of the group.

Michael was different, she decided. He seemed to have no hidden agenda, he just did not know how to come out of his shell. He had little life experience except for work, and often had nothing to bring to any conversation, so that he remained isolated. She tried so hard, as weeks went on, to stop him from being so absorbed in planning hunts, she tried to ease him out of the habit, but became aware that it was impossible. So instead she mediated between the boy and Amon, who was always irritated by the barrage of information. And, as the relationship between the Hunters developed, and they became more and more effective, Michael naturally relaxed. She still had no idea how to relate to him, how to communicate with him, but she was pleased to see his obsession ease.


	3. Blind

_Blind_

It was quiet in Ravens Flat at lunchtime. With no active cases, every member of the STNJ had left the building. All except one. Michael sat, sighing quietly. He was exhausted, he was spending longer and longer in front of the computer attempting to research new cases, find new witches and edit reports of witch activity from police computers and even the Internet itself. He blinked, his eyes gritty and sore behind his glasses, but to take them off made him nervous.

Finally the irritation overcame his nervousness. There was no one around, no-one to see him in his vulnerability. He shut his eyes, reached up and slid the glasses off his face, laying them on his desk, brushing his fingertips along the edge of the desk to orientate himself to his glasses, ensuring he could find them quickly. Like most partially sighted people, the fear of being unable to see meant he always knew where his glasses were. With glasses positioned just-so, he gave his eyes a long, luxurious rub. The irritation eased and for some moments, he watched the patterns behind his eyelids, the concentric circles drawn by the pressure and the movements, cycling down to nothing. Finally, with a deep breath, he prepared himself and opened his eyes. As always, he felt the thrill of electricity down his spine as his world dissolved into pastel technicolour. Unable to distinguish anything other than blobs of vibrant colour, he sat, staring out of the window that had now become more beautiful than stained glass on a summer day. He was transported out of the dingy office and into a sea of colour, a hazy dawn of an indistinct day.

It was ironic, his impairment, which helped him survive this place, was probably partly responsible for him ending up in this predicament. As a baby, his parents had no idea that the vivid blue eyes which gazed up at them were in fact unseeing. They did not realise that his inability to put blocks in the correctly shaped holes on his toys was blindness, not stupidity. When they finally sought the advice of health workers, when his eyes were finally examined, they were told that there was nothing to be done. He began to learn about life as a blind person, and there was where his experiences with computers began.

They found a program which read out each key as it was pressed. A screen reader explained what was shown on the monitor. It was then that his true genius became apparent. The ginger child learnt fast, he memorised where keys were, what keys did, until he was doing far more advanced computer work than his teachers and assistants ever thought possible. He read whatever he could, making the computer narrate for him, sucking up knowledge like a sponge. But even this natural gift with computers would not have lead to hacking had it not been for the life-changing event occurring when he was nine years old. After all, screen readers cannot pick up on the nuances and weaknesses of a website and network, the foolish mistakes of network administrators and corporate security.

The event in question occurred on a very normal day in New York, USA, when the air was crisp, but the snow had not yet fallen. In the anonymous office of an ophthalmologist, an everyday miracle occurred. As the doctor placed the tinted lenses over Michael Lee's eyes, he saw. He felt the fear as the world lurched into focus, he remembered how different everything looked. How for the first time, the random blurring made sense, how the world looked nothing like how it did in his mind. How disordered it was compared to his neat, tidy, ordered world inside the computer. But tha world, like his perceptions of the real world, was inaccurate and incomplete. He realised how limited his knowledge really was, how much he had to learn about everything.

Eventually, he learned how a computer could really be used, beyond anything he had made his system do before. A few months after the miracle, he began coding. A year later, he penetrated his first system. And five years later, he was snatched from his room in the middle of the night, imprisoned and enslaved for his computer crimes. Yes, those glasses did have something to answer for, and, he thought ruefully, sometimes a cure can be more painful and damaging than a disease.

He was lost in his reverie, still enjoying the loss of focus. It was a rare pleasure, he seldom had the courage to reveal his weakness, and at night, the blurry, dark and indistinct shapes frightened him. His light mood, though, was suddenly broken by the sound of footsteps. He listened, but could not recognise them straight away, and scrabbled for his glasses, like they were a shield to protect himself with. As they slipped over his nose, the world swung into focus, the transition so abrupt that his stomach roiled for a few seconds. In the suddenly sharp picture of the office stood Kate, walking carefully towards him.

"Kate" he said, quietly, uncertainly.


	4. Many Happy Returns

The room was dark and chilly. A sliver of light from the moon crept in through barred windows, but brought little illumination. Its main effect was to cast sinister shadows over the floor which seemed to compete for eeriness with a blue light that emanated from a corner. The light revealed a boy, sat in front of computer screens, which beamed the blue light into the deserted room. He stretched, looked around and shivered slightly, his own body adding to the collage of shadows being cast across the floor.

Michael took a brief look around the office and sighed. He had been in this office for a year, pretty much to the day, and he still found the nights slightly terrifying, only bearable when he allowed himself to fall into a coding trance, either hacking or scripting his own projects. Tonight, though, he was struggling to concentrate, he didn't want to be hacking, researching or even coding for himself. He didn't even want to be surfing the internet, his other hobby, searching out forums. Although he knew he was unable to post on forums, he would use them as a vicarious life, searching for the most vibrant forums and reading posts, absorbing life experiences through them, making up for his own imprisonment by living the lives of others, albeit in his imagination and on screen.

But not tonight. The reason? On this night, fifteen years ago, his mother had brought him into the world, screaming in protest as though his neonatal self knew exactly how difficult life was going to turn out. Yes, it was his birthday. He had missed his fourteenth, which had occurred only three or four days after his capture, he had been in no fit state to mark it, and had not even realised he had missed it until a few days before. He was struggling with the idea of his birthday this time, he felt as though ten years had passed, not merely one. This was one birthday, but he was going to be celebrating every birthday he had, here, in Raven's Flat, until the day he became expendable or decided he just could not take it any more, and left the world. The thought was depressing him, he rarely let his imprisonment bother him, he forced his feelings deep inside, choosing instead to concentrate on work, and how he had finally found a place where his skills were accepted and he was valued. He could almost feel positive about it sometimes, but not tonight. He was lonely, he was supposed to be celebrating, but there was no-one to celebrate with. Anger flashed into him briefly that nobody had noticed it was his birthday, that they paid so little attention to him. He knew all their birthdays, their STNJ anniversaries, everything, and they knew nothing about him, but assumed they knew everything.

With a start, he focussed back on the office again, hearing the whir of the lift as it rose towards the fifth floor. Who could that be? Maybe Karasuma, who was kind and even vaguely motherly to him sometimes, but who was gradually drinking herself away to escape her craft? Several times he had put her to bed in the Flat after she had drunk herself into oblivion then wandered up to the office to cry. It seemed her only method of release. Even less likely, was Amon. The senior hunter would just disappear on his own, driving fast around the motorways of Japan in his expensive sports car to assuage his own feelings, leaving Michael to pick up the pieces, deleting the traffic violations from the police database and ensuring Amon faced no comeback. He had no more time to ponder, however, as the old fashioned lift doors crashed open and, waving a plastic bag, She stepped out. Kate, with her dancing body and shining hair, gleaming still, even in the weak light of the moon and the harsh light of the monitor.

he gaped at her, speechless

"Someone told me it was your birthday," she greeted him, "somebody also told me you would be fifteen. Well? Is that True?"

"Umm, yes, yes it is" he replied hastily.

"Good then" she smiled, "I bought you something"

She lowered the bag onto the desk next to his, and the plastic slid down to reveal two litres of Coca Cola and a bottle of Vodka. Michael could do nothing but stare incredulously, flicking his gaze from the bottles to her face, then back again.

"Umm, I am only going to be 15"

He said again, nervously, stuttering slightly over the Japanese sounds.

"Yeah, but in Britain, it's a sort of tradition to get hammered on your fifteenth birthday. Well, at least in my part of Britain it is" Kate responded in English, knowing that Michael was bilingual.

He considered "OK, maybe just a little bit, but we have to stay out of the way of the cameras. I'm sure Boss wouldn't like this,"

He had switched into English too, surprised at the effort the words were. He had spoken English to his parents every day at home, in his old life, but had spoken none since arriving at STN.

Kate winked, then he noticed that she was deliberately positioned so the camera could not see what she had brought. Michael cottoned on, and hooked up some small speakers to his CD player. He was not supposed to have speakers, they interfered with the monitoring, but, in his mind, a bit of interference sometimes was a good thing, so he had bodged them together from an old communicator and some spare wire.

With music on, and glasses collected, they were good to go.

"Happy Birthday" said Kate as they clinked glasses together and began to drink.

Michael was expecting it to taste foul, and was pleasantly surprised at the sweet coke flavour overpowering the vodka. He had never drunk alcohol before, only ever smelt whisky on Karasuma's breath, and had imagined all alcohol would all taste as foul as those fumes. Finding that it did not, and that it seemed to have little affect on him, he drank faster, making the novice's mistake of forgetting the after-bite. It did not take long before he had become decidedly tipsy.

"You see," he tried to explain to Kate, slurring his words ever so slightly "they all have their things, their.." he paused, clearly searching his rapidly diminishing vocabulary for the English word, "quirks" he finally arrived at the word, and spoke it laboriously.

"Like Boss, he's there with his cigars and he's really scary. But it's so funny when he's talking to you and not paying attention and the ash falls onto his legs. Imagine if he set fire to himself!"

Michael was laughing slightly hysterically now, and swigging some more drink, reached for a pencil. Placing it between his lips like a cigar, he assumed Zaizen's straight backed posture and began talking, capturing Zaizen's inflections and mannerisms almost perfectly. Kate disliked Zaizen intensely, sensing something under his genial surface which frightened her, and for a moment, watching Michael, the fear came back. Until, he dropped the pencil "cigar," completely in character, he pretended to set himself on fire, and the fear vanished like mist under the sun. His portrayal was hysterical, she was in fits of giggles as he moved on to Doujima, the laziest hunter, again capturing her character, even as much as her slightly strutting walk, always with half a mind on the catwalk. As he finally tried to parody Amon, her laughing and the drink got too much for him, and he broke into giggles too, spraying vodka and coke everywhere as he laughed. The pair laughed for a long time, enough for both to start feeling a pain in their ribs. Finally, Kate calmed enough to say

"You must be really talented, you're so good at that!"

Michael's whole demeanour changed as he heard the question, he stopped laughing so fast it was as though someone had turned a switch off in his mind. He was very, very silent for a time, then replied, in a voice he was clearly forcing himself to keep steady.

"Nah, it gets easy when you're watching the same people all the time."

Kate, realising what she had said, felt an icy, sober chill spread out across her body. She was silent, not knowing what to say, cursing herself for being so thoughtless and for putting her foot in it so badly when she wanted to help the boy be happy.

Michael, looking at Kate also realised what had happened, though the thought took a lot longer for him to process.

"Don't worry about it" he shrugged, "I don't, well, not usually"

"Really! Doesn't it ever bother you?" replied Kate, the alcohol overcoming her inhibitions about the question.

"Course it does. But if I let it, I'd be lost. I don't have a choice, why worry about it. I don't regret the whole hacking thing, so I guess I can't be sorry about it. But"

he choked slightly and gulped at the vodka again.

"I had so many plans. No-one ever believes that, but I really did. I was gonna do stuff, I was gonna go to America and study computing, I was gonna build things, make things. But, it's too late now, eh?"

Kate looked at him, her head cocked to the side.

"Stranger things have happened"

she said, cryptically.

Michael glanced up, drunkenly sniggering slightly

"Oh you have no idea!" he laughed "If I got out of here, there'd be lots of others out to get me, and I don't think they're as nice as SOLOMON"

Now Kate was very confused. She had never heard SOLOMON described as nice before, in twelve years of service all around the world. Her confusion showed on her face, as Michael looked up at her, and he felt the need to explain his statement further.

"How much do you know about hacking? Not the technical bits, but the things people do?"

"I read the papers" she replied. "I guess I've heard of it"

"Do you remember, a couple of years back, there was an incident? To do with the visit from the President of the United States. Something with his wife? I'm sure you heard about it, since you were in America" Michael began, hesitantly

Kate thought for a moment

"Oh yeah! When the First Lady tried to get into Japan and they found she had a criminal record. Yeah, there was a huge mess about it, proper diplomatic incident. Very embarrassing for the Japanese I would have thought! But, I can't remember. What did they think she'd done, again? And when they found out, the guy who did it had a really strange name."

"Prostitution" Michael blurted out, blushing furiously. "Thirty four counts in Washington DC, one in New York and one in Houston. And the name was FatalException" He pronounced the handle in that strange way that left the listener in no doubt that there was an underscore between the two words.

"Blimey!" Kate replied, her surprise causing her to revert to the British English of her childhood. "either you have a very good memory or..." She trailed off, realising from Michael's face that the or was probably the answer

He blushed more deeply

"It was a rubbish name, I know. But the American NCIC, it was just there. I never usually did damage, but just that one time, and a couple of others. I paid NASA a visit a few times, the CIA, the usual suspects. The Americans have never liked people getting into their systems though. I didn't realise until I came here and started looking into it, how close they were to finding me. I had a couple of weeks, maybe a month, no more. At least here, I can still use a computer and this building is a bit bigger than where I'd have ended up if they'd got me." he smirked. "They're still looking for FatalException!" He giggled some more, the effects of the drink still there.

Kate smiled at him. She supposed he was right, that maybe this had been better than the alternatives, but it was not a decision she would have liked to make. She laughed to herself. Who was she trying to kid? She had made a very similar decision, or had the decision made for her, the moment she went through puberty and had acquired witches' powers, "the craft" as it was euphemistically called. When the masked men had taken her from her house in the dead of night, thirteen years old, when her mother had held her one last time and told her that she loved her, but could no longer help her. Then she had understood her choice, be taken, learn to control her power, accept the Craft, or turn on them, release the power and become a Witch. The same choice, maybe.

She glanced towards the window, and noticed with shock that the pale greys of dawn were ghosting across the sky.

"I should go" she said "It's late, you need to sleep and so do I!"

There was no answer from the teenager and she saw he was already asleep in his chair. She gently shook him awake and pointed him in the direction of his own room. He shook himself and rose, shambling off to his real bed as she followed in his wake, outside into the waking dawn.

It was Sunday, supposedly Michael's day of rest when the shrill ringing of his communicator woke him from his deep sleep. Groaning, he reached for the device, getting himself together enough to grunt a greeting down the phone.

"Michael" It was Amon, the team leader, sounding crisp and together as he always did

"Was she with you last night?"

"Who?" Michael blurted out, tired, groggy and confused

"Kate" Amon replied, curtly.

"Why?" replied Michael, lucidity slowly returning to him, along with the memory of the hostility between Kate and Amon

"It's not important right now. But have you done the security camera backups for this week yet? Have you transferred the security logs onto the main server yet?"

Now Michael was very confused "Yes, I did them yesterday"

"Well, I suggest that the records of your visitor last night are corrupted. I believe you have been having problems with the backup systems and the security subsystem server"and with that Amon hung up.

It was worded like a question, but the tone of voice left no doubt that this was a statement. Even in his groggy state, Michael caught on straight away and pushed himself out of bed and up to the office, already visualising the task ahead.

The task was completed and completed well when, the next morning, he was summoned to the office of Zaizen, the Boss. Still slightly fuzzy-headed from sleep deprivation, he stood in front of the desk.

"Michael. It has come to my attention that some of the security logs are missing from the system." He paused

"Yes Boss" Michael answered in English, knowing the Director liked being addressed in the language, then continuing in Japanese. "Batou, the security server, crashed yesterday. Linux just fell over, took lots of things out with it just before the scheduled backup to Kusanagi. I thought I had got it all back" he paused, leaving the unnecessary, unspoken.

Zaizen peered up at him for a time. Michael felt deeply uncomfortable, realising how childish his server names actually sounded if you said them out loud. He loved Ghost in the Shell, and his Administrator account for the system was set up as Project2501PuPPeTMasTer, but he guessed from the Administrator's face that he was not amused by the anime names, or his personification of the servers.

Finally, Zaizen leant back on his chair,

"Tighten up procedures, do not let this occur again" He barked.

Michael nodded, leaving the room as quickly as he could. On re-entering the main office, he tried to look as inconspicuous as possible, but was very aware of Amon's eyes on his back. What was going on? Why all the machinations around the new hunter?


End file.
